trouble with fry help!!

[wghibbits]

Hi all I have about 40 pb fry that are three weeks old they just started dieing off yesterday , they look fine but lost two yesterday and two today, could it be gill flukes, I went to lps and got prazi pro and dosed this morning,could it be anything else. Water params are fine am 0, nitrite 0 ph 6.5 temp 85 nitrates 5,any help would be great

thanks
BILL

[mikesmac]

Hi Bill,

I know some don't like it but do you have any salt in the water? I've found it helps with the young ones ( 1 tbls/ 10 gallons ) and 85 degrees is on the low side, I never keep them at less than 86, preferably 88 to 90 when under 3 or so inches. You also have to be real careful with water changes with the small ones as I've killed some fry by not having the temp and / or PH exactly the same when adding the water back in too quickly so until they are about the size of a nickel I let the new water siphon in through an airline so it's nice & slow and you are essentially acclimating them if it's off a little. Actually though, at 3 weeks they should already be bigger than that so that's probably not it unless the difference in the new water is way off or fluctuating alot if it's not aged beforehand. The one other thing could be your PH. If you are one of those people that keep it above neutral... even the slightest amount of ammonia in the water will be toxic to the young ones. I know you said it measured at 0, but alot of the test kits don't show positive until there are actually toxic amounts. The larger the fry get, the more ammonia they will be exposed to if kept in the same size tank and same amount of water change size / frequency. This can be avoided if the PH is kept just the smallest amount on the acid side. Hope you figure it out before losing any more.

Mike

[wghibbits]

Hi Mike,
thanks for the reply,I don't have any salt in the water,I do water changes with aged water at the same temp about 85, I have raised fry with this set before no problem at all, may be the prazi pro will kick in and i wont lose any more.I will keep the salt in mind though thanks again for the fast responce.

Bill

[mikesmac]

Hi Bill,

Just being curious, did you add new fish or bring something in that would have introduced flukes to your system? I've used prazi pro on fry but usually only if I noticed them flashing after thinking I might have exposed them to a new arrival or something through cross contamination while cleaning tanks. I also wonder about bloodworms bringing them in too sometimes when nothing else has changed. (I'd like to see someone do controlled experiments on the Hikari "Bio-Pure" to see if they actually are)

Just one other explanation about my recommendation for the salt....nitrites are another of those things that a lot of the test kits have a hard time measuring accurately. It would be great if the nitrification process was "instantaneous" but I would tend to believe that there has to be nitrite present once the ammonia is converted...even if not measurable by the test kits....before the bacteria then converts it to nitrates. With the small tanks that fry are usually kept in, same as ammonia the nitrites they are exposed to will increase as they grow and are fed more if tank size and water change amounts and /or frequency remain the same. The slowly increased exposure to Nitrites can have a cumulative effect which, when it reaches that magic point, starts killing off the fry. From what I understand the salt helps to reduce the amount of nitrite absorbed by the fish thus helping to minimize the accumulation in their system...hopefully preventing any losses.

In any case I hope the Prazi-pro works for you (that's another Hikari product...maybe they should sell their bloodworms pre-soaked with prazi-pro:) ...hey can I patent that?), I've used it but never really found it to be effective....but alot of people do write about having godd results with it, and the airstones do put out nice fine bubbles when you put it in :).

[pcsb23]

This happens frequently - fry dieing at 3 weeks - used to think it was flukes and it still can be. Adding salt is a bad idea, fry don't tolerate salt very well at all so I wouldn't do it. If its flukes FMG or prazi will work, an alternative is to try something like acriflavine at 1 drop a gallon.

[Canadian_velvet]

I usually dose the fry with Quick Cure (formulin and malachite green) by age 12 days to prevent gill flukes. It doesn't seem to matter if the parents are "clean" or not, if I don't treat at this point, they drop like flies; when I do treat: not the loss of one baby.